Bitcoin: An accounting regime

Abstract

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and payment system that leverages blockchain technology to disintermediate financial transactions. Drawing on a netnography of the early Bitcoin community from the technology’s formation in 2008 through to the disappearance of its founder in 2011, this paper demonstrates the contours of Bitcoin as an accounting regime. We propose that Bitcoin constitutes a new technology built upon social practices infused with accounting language to inscribe economic value in a particular regime of verification and validation. These practices are shaped by social relations and fuse accounting and programming logic to create a new Bitcoin mindset. While Bitcoin purports to replace trust-in-persons with trust-in-systems, we demonstrate that the actual power of Bitcoin as an accounting regime depends on the human interactions underpinning the system. We also offer a critical perspective on Bitcoin by examining the potential consequences of a payment system that mobilizes accounting practices in service of an ideology that rejects any form of oversight.